{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__sport_science","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"sport_science","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"stale_athlete_decision_layers","causal_lever_id":"explicit_lifecycle_state_and_current_authority_gate","proposal":{"problem":"Athlete-specific test results, readiness baselines, training prescriptions, rehabilitation plans, and model outputs accumulate across seasons and staff changes. Superseded layers can remain visible without a clear current/expired status and be reused in present load decisions, while indiscriminate deletion would erase longitudinal, clinical, consent, or injury-reconstruction evidence.","actors_substrate":["athletes whose performance and health data are retained","coaches and strength-conditioning staff","sport scientists and analysts","physiotherapists and sports-medicine clinicians","club or federation data stewards","dated assessments, prescriptions, plans, models, and derived reports"],"observable_state":"Multiple dated or contradictory athlete artifacts remain searchable as though concurrently authoritative; ownership, supersession, dependencies, retention basis, and restore status are incomplete or inconsistent.","consequence":"Staff may select obsolete baselines or prescriptions, repeat avoidable work, delay decisions, expose sensitive data longer than justified, or lose evidence needed to reconstruct injury and training history.","affected_objective":"Safe, timely, evidence-traceable athlete management with bounded privacy, storage, and review burden.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits","domain_realization":"Successive assessments, plans, thresholds, annotations, and model outputs are added to each athlete record over time.","claim_kind":"CORPUS"},{"archetype_element":"stale layers masquerade as current","domain_realization":"An older prescription or baseline can remain discoverable without an authoritative supersession state and be selected for a current decision.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"retention value changes with age and context","domain_realization":"A plan may lose operational authority while its measurements retain longitudinal, clinical, or reconstruction value.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"dependency-sensitive removal","domain_realization":"Derived reports, injury reviews, longitudinal models, and clinical records may depend on an apparently obsolete artifact.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"exception-governed lifecycle","domain_realization":"Clinical obligations, consent terms, investigations, safeguarding, and research protocols can override ordinary retirement rules.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"bounded active stack with preserved memory","domain_realization":"Only validated current artifacts remain decision-active; superseded material is labeled, archived, summarized, or deleted through an auditable path.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Identity-resolved register of athlete artifacts, versions, owners, and athlete linkage."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Creation, effective, validation, and supersession dates plus season and episode ordering."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Artifact class mapped to active-use period, archive period, deletion eligibility, and governing basis."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Age and context change review priority and operational authority; they do not imply physiological data decay."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Review or expiry triggered by elapsed time, new assessment, staff handoff, protocol change, or episode closure."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Separate indicators for current decision value, reconstruction value, sensitivity, and harm from erroneous reuse."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Pre-disposition check for clinical, analytical, audit, research, and injury-review dependents."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, supersede, archive, compact, quarantine, or approved deletion paths."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named, review-dated exceptions for clinical, evidentiary, historical, or consented research value."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Who-when-why record plus recoverable quarantine before irreversible destruction where permitted."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Budgets for review labor, secure storage, retrieval time, and active-system capacity."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Scheduled owner attestation and event-triggered revalidation."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Clinical-record, investigation, safeguarding, privacy, and research-protocol overrides."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Current decision-active, reference-only, restricted archive, and deletion-pending states."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Detection of artifacts with no live dependent, required retention basis, or reconstruction role."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Visible expired/deleted status and pointer to the current successor."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag repetitive derived outputs for validated summaries while preserving required source data."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Authorized recovery of archived artifacts with integrity and linkage checks."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Estimate affected athletes, decisions, dependents, irreversibility, and sensitivity before deletion."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Flags conflicts with current testing, protocol, roster, equipment, injury episode, or owner status."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Rejected because a composite age-discounted score could falsely equate old with invalid and obscure clinical or longitudinal value; use separate indicators and review gates.","counterfactual_removal":"Removal avoids false precision without breaking the lifecycle chain."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"TEST_DESIGN","adaptation_or_rejection":"Periodically restore sampled archived athlete artifacts across age and format bands and verify integrity, readability, authorization, and linkage.","counterfactual_removal":"Archive recoverability would remain assumed rather than demonstrated."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Access recency is not valid authority for athlete-health or training evidence, and capacity pressure cannot choose destruction.","counterfactual_removal":"No causal or safety function is lost."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Gate deletion on live clinical, analytical, audit, and reconstruction dependencies; incomplete visibility blocks deletion.","counterfactual_removal":"Cleanup could silently invalidate injury reconstruction or derived decisions, hard-gating viability."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Translate tiers into decision-active, reference-only, restricted archive, and deep archive states, with retrieval constraints made visible.","counterfactual_removal":"Authority labeling could still work, but long-term retention would impose greater cost and active-system clutter."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Artifact importance is content- and obligation-dependent; generational position alone is unsafe for athlete records.","counterfactual_removal":"No essential function is lost because class-specific disposition replaces blind rotation."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Map each sport-science artifact class to active authority, review, archive, maximum-retention, exception, and override rules.","counterfactual_removal":"Artifacts would again remain active or be removed by ad hoc judgment, breaking explicit lifecycle governance."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use reversible quarantine with impact-sized windows except where privacy or legal rules require prompt irreversible deletion.","counterfactual_removal":"Pilot cleanup errors would become harder to reverse and unacceptable for higher-impact artifacts."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Inventory artifacts and flag semantic conflicts, missing owners, elapsed reviews, and superseded contexts without automatically changing status.","counterfactual_removal":"The hypothesized stale active layers would remain invisible and unactionable."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Fixed self-executing deletion clocks are unsafe; adapt the useful idea as review-by dates already represented in expiration triggers, not automatic destruction.","counterfactual_removal":"Event- and class-based review triggers still bound active authority."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Leave a minimal status, reason, date, and successor pointer consistent with privacy constraints.","counterfactual_removal":"Users and downstream references could confuse deletion with nonexistence or revive superseded artifacts."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory athlete decision artifacts and resolve their identities, owners, dates, and dependents.","Detect artifacts whose context conflicts with the current athlete episode, protocol, assessment, or successor.","Apply class-specific retention and authority rules plus named exceptions and mandatory overrides.","Mark validated current artifacts as decision-active and visibly demote superseded artifacts to reference or archive states.","Before deletion, check dependencies and impact; quarantine eligible artifacts and retain an auditable marker.","Periodically revalidate exceptions and prove sampled archives can be restored.","HYPOTHESIS: reducing ambiguous active layers lowers obsolete-artifact selection and decision reconciliation time without impairing reconstruction."],"baseline":"Ordinary baseline: shared athlete-management folders or platforms retain successive artifacts; staff use dates, filenames, memory, and informal owner confirmation to decide which item is current, with cleanup performed episodically.","nearest_rival":"A single manually maintained current-athlete summary or dashboard that points to approved metrics and plans while leaving the underlying artifact store unmanaged.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["athletes","coaches and performance staff","sports-medicine clinicians","analysts and researchers","club or federation data stewards"],"decision_authority":"The organizational data controller authorizes lifecycle policy; licensed clinical custodians control clinical-record disposition; research custodians enforce consent and protocol terms; coaches may retire only coaching artifacts within delegated scope. Athletes retain applicable consent, access, and correction rights.","authorized_first_step":"Run an eight-week pilot on one squad's nonclinical performance artifacts: inventory them, add read-only current/superseded/reference labels, and reversibly archive a steward-approved sample; compare stale selections and retrieval outcomes with the prior eight weeks.","excluded_actions":["automatic changes to training or return-to-play decisions","deletion of clinical, safeguarding, investigation, or research records","hard deletion during the pilot","expiry based solely on age or low access","overriding athlete consent or licensed-clinician authority"],"halt_rollback":"Halt new dispositions on any missing dependency, contested authority, incorrect current label, unauthorized exposure, failed restore, or decision disruption; restore quarantined artifacts, remove pilot labels if necessary, and preserve the audit record for review."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Existing systems may already enforce one authoritative current plan, version history, role-based access, and reliable staff verification; observed errors may instead arise from poor measurements or judgment rather than stale artifacts.","analogy_break":"Human performance records are not interchangeable storage objects: an old measurement can gain longitudinal or injury-reconstruction value, and an expired prescription is not an invalid historical observation. Age therefore cannot directly encode truth or safe deletion.","failure_condition":"The approach fails if artifact identity and dependencies cannot be resolved, owners do not act on flags, labels create competing authorities, archives cannot be restored, or privacy rules prohibit the proposed quarantine and markers.","problem_falsifier":"A representative decision audit finds that superseded artifacts are rarely presented or selected, current authority is already unambiguous, and stale-layer exposure contributes negligibly to decision delay, error, privacy burden, or maintenance effort.","intervention_falsifier":"Compared with baseline, the bounded pilot does not reduce selections of superseded artifacts, reconciliation time, or active-layer count, or it produces any material loss of retrieval, reconstruction fidelity, privacy control, or correct current-artifact access.","risks":["Incorrectly expiring a still-valid plan or baseline","Archiving information needed for urgent care or return-to-play review","Privacy exposure through retained quarantine copies or tombstones","False staleness flags caused by incomplete context","Hidden external or manually maintained dependencies","Administrative burden displacing athlete-facing work","Lifecycle labels being mistaken for clinical judgments"]},"null_rationale":null,"classification":{"candidate_kind":"DOMAIN_TRANSFER","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","evidence_maturity":"HYPOTHESIS"},"revision_change_log":{"revision_kind":"ORIGINAL","prior_problem_id":null,"prior_causal_lever_id":null,"problem_changed":false,"causal_lever_changed":false,"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"repairs_addressed":[]},"confidence":0.82,"generator_notes":"Closed-book structural transfer. The candidate concerns lifecycle authority over accumulated sport-science decision artifacts, not physiological decay or generic storage shortage; empirical benefit remains untested."}